Terror Train - 1980

I am listening to and thoroughly enjoying In Myers We Trust with Gyers and Rust. I also rewatched Halloween II recently and this got me into horror mood, as one is wont to do.

Terror Train kept Jamie Lee Curtis in the spotlight as a 80's Scream Queen. I never quite realized how many horror movies she was in in such a short time. She was in 5 horror movie in 3 years, and 7 total in the early 80s. That's a scream queen right there.

In the beginning of Terror Train, Jamie Lee Curtis takes part in a ritual hazing type thing where a bunch of kids scare some weird scrawny dude. For some reason, the beginning already threw me off. Minute 5 and we already know who the killer is and why they're killing. It's stupid. Come on, have you heard of something called "suspense" ever? Movie?

The whole of the high school or college or whatever goes on a train trip, which is admittedly super cool. It's also near Halloween and everyone on the train is in costume. The train idea is a huge sell point for the flick and has to be what go this movie made. Anywho, they're all on a train and the killer is there too. As the killer kills people, he takes their costume, meaning that no one knows who the killer is and we as an audience aren't ever too sure what the killer will look like next.

The kills are average to boring. A couple boring stabs, a throat slit maybe. Blah. Not a highlight. So what then is the highlight? Hm. Was there one? I'll admit, I didn't particularly like this movie. It had nothing to keep one interested.

Terror Train is too slow first of all. We know what's happening and exactly when and why it's all happening. The train adds a tiny, tiny bit of interest because of mostly the cool power of the train, but that is it. It's barely used also. Instead, they focus on a shit ton of magic tricks by David Copperfield, randomly riding in the train entertaining the high school kids. Okay...?

It's not like it's fucking terrible, but it ain't great. I'll give it 1 star.

Blue Velvet - 1986

600 motherfucking entries, motherfucker! I'm dancing with the big boys.. Or something, yeah I dunno.

I watched eXistenZ recently, which led to me renting several other David Cronenberg films from the library, and in my mind David Cronenberg always links up to David Lynch. It's "the two David's" who are both doing something awesome and unique in film, and I love both of them in different but also similar ways.

First of all, 1986? Nineteen EIGHTY six?!!! This movie feels so much more 90's, so SO much ahead of it's time. The controversial plot stuff, the characters, the darkness, the weirdness, this feels so much later on in time as a film. The style and the characters all feel more 90's, the bleakness and the storyline feels like that return to nihilism present especially in the early 90's. I thought it was 91, 93. I forgot this came before Twin Peaks, and that was also part of it.

David Lynch exploded onto the scene with Eraserhead, wowwed critics with his seriousness and pathos in Elephant Man, proved he could do sci fi even if the studio interfered with Dune, and then made this movie, Blue Velvet. Blue Velvet is one of this more linear films. I just counted right now, and according to "what I think" exactly half of David Lynch's films are in the "fucking weird" category and the other half are a lot more linear than I ever remember. Brief breakdown.

Eraserhead: weird as fuck, likely the weirdest thing he's made, though Mulholland Drive is close.
Elephant Man: linear, character based, performance based, feels like a return to 60's noir and mystery influence
Dune: Linear. There is no weirdness in this, at all, except the druggie extras with the blue eyes. Lynch decides not to do main stream.
Blue Velvet: Linear. I remember this one as weird, but it's not. Not really. It has strange elements and creepiness, but not weird.
Wild At Heart: linear. His idea of lovers and oddballs is the only weirdness here. Love the snakeskin jacket.
Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me: I'm not really counting this one, but it is a more linear version of the TV show, which had only a bit of weird.
Lost Highway: Weird. Very weird. Third most weird for me, and very layered.
The Straight Story: obviously linear, feels like the weakest of any movie he ever made.
Mulholland Drive: It's close up there in weirdness level to Eraserhead. I love this movie. Love, love love. Might be my favorite.
Inland Empire: The least weird, but that might just be because of the sheer length and the chore this was to watch.

So actually less than half of his movies are weird. And as I said, I remembered Blue Velvet being one of the weird ones. And let's be honest here, it has been many years. I think the three things anyone remembers about this movie are super weird: Dennis Hopper using helium to get high, Dennis Hopper yelling lines such as "Heineken?! Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!" and Dennis Hopper having strange mommy fantasies when he's high, fucking Issabella Rossellini. I mean really, this is a character which defines and makes this movie, and it's pretty much the only part one is going to remember many years after last watching it.

In the beginning of Blue Velvet, Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey finds a ear laying in a field by his house. The plot, the idea behind it is similar. What if you found something like this, and spurned on by curiousity, you investigated it? And I think it's extremely realistic in that it shows you'd discover something truly awful, truly horrible to be the cause. In this case, Dennis Hopper has kidnapped a woman's child, and is using that as leverage to rape and abuse her. The cops are involved as eventually shown, and only because Jeffrey is a innocent man who gets in too deep and is too good of a person to back the fuck off, do we as the audience get brought into this dark, twisted storyline.

There's quite literally endless things to talk about here. Whether it's David Lynch's style of taking us exactly where we don't want to go, or his horrible, hateful, but somehow extremely realistic characters, or his amazing acting and cinematography, or the music or the colors or the sets or the minimalism striking up perfectly against extremity... It is ALL here.

This is the type of film where it is needless, absolutely OBVIOUS that it is a masterwork. Every single thing is here, and there's also a sweet love story which doesn't feel rushed. This is the type of film to make you realize what high barometer a 5 star film really sets. This is up there with the other films I've rated which make me wish I didn't hand out 5 stars to ANYTHING else. Cause this is really and truly next level directing and writing. All of the stars. All of them.

HydroSphere - 1997

Also known as 2103: The Deadly Wake.

Malcolm McDowell should've been in more movies. Or at least, better movies. The guy looks awesome, was a great actor, has a fucking sweet accent, and proved he had what it takes really early on with roles in Clockwork Orange, If, and Caligula. He is a bit "controversial", is that why mainstream widespread success eluded him? These same big weird roles relegated him to B movie hell?

HydroSphere is what it's called on Amazon, 2103 is what it's called everywhere else. This is beginning to be a recurring theme, a sign that a movie probably sucks. If you have no confidence in the name, how can you have confidence in the movie?

Michael Pare and Malcolm McDowell star in this low budget 90's oddity of a film. It's a film in which there's a mutated talking baby immersed in a tube of water that characters interact with. It's a film in which there's a kinky black clad stormtrooper-like female agent that goes around killing people in tunnels. It's a film in which Malcolm McDowell's character swigs whiskey like it were going out of style, yet never acts or seems intoxicated in the least.

2103 is on the cusp of leaning towards so-bad-it's-good territory. It overstays it's welcome and is overly long, with altogether too much needless dialogue and nothingness happening. It's in the realm though, it's in the biosphere of so-bad-its-good, and I would say it makes it.

The plot online says the movie is about Malcolm McDowell discovering the cargo on a ship he is given is made up of inmates. The plot description also says there is a bomb onboard the ship. I don't remember either of these plot points. Instead, the end scenes involve the kinky black Predator in a classic Star Wars-esque electricity fight with an unexplained angelic lady. We also never find out wtf was the deal with the Predator. This movie made no fucking sense, but it is a fun enough watch.

I give it 3.5 stars.

Blood Sabbath - 1972

Choppin' my way through the boxset. I think my silent, not promised goal right now is to make it through in just two months. If I do that I could finish it by the end of the year. I am going to keep trying to do two movies every time I sit down to watch it. Hey, if you're gonna commit to one, you can commit to two.

In this weirdo flick, drifter David is walking along early on and gets beer sprayed on him by some passing teenagers. It's a strange intro to a strange film. David is a Vietnam veteran with PTSD and as the film goes on we learn a little bit about that.

David is hanging out by a creek when a girl comes swimming up and they spend some time together. David and her instantly fall in love, but this girl claims she is "of another world" and is a water nymph. David just sorta goes along with this. Meanwhile, there is a group of witches I guess nearby, and David can be with his water nymph if he loses his soul. He thinks the witches could do that for him.

This movie was made for 4 reasons: Boobs, Butts, Crotches, and stupid weirdness. Yeah, there is a shit ton of nudity in this. Fully nude chicks dance around, showing their best assets, cause those assets sure aren't acting. David is also a boring actor. I don't think he needs to have a soul removal. I think he already didn't have one.

Nothing really happens for most of the movie. Eventually David gets his soul removed and that changes him. There's very little to write about, and in the end it's a low budget nudie flick that tried and failed to have a horror edge. The weirdness and the nudity elevates it to about 2.5 stars.

Metamorphosis - 1990

Happy anniversary Metamorphosis! The movie turned 30 this year.

Metamorphosis got in my mind because I just watched and enjoyed George Eastman in Hands of Steel. George Eastman is a very prolific Italian writer, director, actor and producer. He primarily wrote films, known for Italian schlock like Porno Holocaust, Antropophagus, The Great Aliigator and Dog Lay Afternoon. Yes, that last film is about a woman who has sex with a dog.

In this Eastman wrote and directed entry, a brilliant, attractive, and successful scientist was recently given $200,000 for a research grant. His research comes into question, and it turns out he has been studying immortality, and has also tracked the human genome. Interesting that now we have actually tracked the genome! Anyways, all the other doctors naturally freak out, and soon enough our rejected doc is injecting himself with a radical untested drug he's been developing.

I watched this in part because several things online talked about how the doctor eventually turns into a T-Rex. I was excited to see a stupid late entry Italian horror film about a dude turning into a dinosaur. But, as we all know, sometimes these movies don't live up to their synopsis.

First of all, the movie is drag-your-ass-in-the-dirt-slooooooww. The beginning is interesting as we get to know the characters and such, our doc gets with a woman, and seeing him inject a needle into his eye was cool. But then, it's dialogue and nothingness as I guess things sort of happen. It seems the doc begins losing chunks of time, it seems he is transforming somehow in unknown ways, and his relationships get hurt because of these factors. Blah blah blah.

We only get "the T-Rex" part of this movie in the last 5 minutes, I kid you not. It's another great fucking costume too, or prop, or whatever it is. There's been some good makeup effects along the way I suppose, but it's all been too little, too late in my critical opinion. It's just ssssllllooowwwww and duuuuuulll and I was waiting for it to end.

Matamorphosis was on my infamous list of films I'd wanted to see. Now I've seen it, and it kinda sucked, so oh well. It happens. 2 stars.

Hands of Steel - 1986

Well, not only am I keeping up with the whole 2 movies off the boxset in one day thing, but I also rewatched a movie previosuly reviewed on this blog, in another Mill Creek boxset! Here is my previous review of Hands of Steel.

I re-read my review, which I have to say was in a lot more detail than I remember writing it. I thought this was one where I completely didn't pay attention, perhaps being out of my mind of weed and beer at the time. I guess I had short attention from being tired, but anyways, I'm just going to touch on a few things I didn't mention in the original review.

Number one, everyone in this movie is likable. That was something I picked up on this time. Daniel Greene, Janet Agren, John Saxon, Geroge Eastman, they're all just doing fantastic work and they play good characters. Pac Querak is a thinly written character to be sure, inspired by the likes of The Terminator obviously, but in that role many actors would fail. Daniel Greene plays him with a brutality which is really suited to the film and makes you take it more seriously.

There's bad stuff too. The middle of this whole movie just lags and slows down. There was a lot of debate in my head about if I change the rating from 3.5 stars to 4. I feel in a lot of ways like this is a 4 star film. However, the whole middle section with endless nothing happening, very drawn out and mostly pointless arm wrestling, and stuff like that does keep the score at a 3.5. I wish this had been higher budget, and these had been real action scenes instead of fucking arm wrestling. I feel like that is 100% because they didn't have enough money for anything better.

Also unforgivable is that the movie has one reveal waiting and obscured. The reveal that Daniel Greene is a cyborg could have been a huge, fun part of the film. Instead we see him win the arm wrestling, cut to his robotic hand open and being worked on. What a stupid, stupid waste of a cool idea. I'm almost talking myself into a 3 star rating, but I did thoroughly enjoy this nonetheless. I'll give it a 3.5, and I'll even say it's worth watching twice- five years apart.

The Thirsty Dead - 1974

Laura Gemser stars in.... oh wait. You're telling me that isn't Laura Gemser?

I can't see how pics will look anymore but anyways, the actress in this I really thought was Gemser.

This is back on the boxset, and since I'm not going to rewatch The Werewold of Washington or They Saved Hitler's Brain, I skip those to and dive right into this super low budget, Philippean made "thriller". Cirio H. Santiago and Roger Corman could do justice to the Philippeans, this movie not so much.

In the beginning we have three white women that are indistinguishable and Laura Gemser hanging out doing whatever when some weird Jawa looking guys kidnap them. They put the girls on a boat and take them to a underground dungeon where an evil cult is sacrificing girls because that's what evil cults do. There is a sympathetic guy played by John Considine who helps them out, and slowly, eventually, an escape plan is forged.

Whoooo this movie was a chore. The dialogue and audio is pure shit first of all, and the movie moves about as slow as shit too. This movie needed, in order to succeed, SOMETHING it brought to the table. Movies bring horror, violence, effects, nudity, strong characters, predicaments, all these things and more make a movie fun. THis movie had zero of that. Instead it settles for skimpy clothed women standing around and mumbling to each other.

The best part of the entire movie was pretending that the guys in huge hoods are Jawas. They appear in the first 5 minutes and then never again. Half a star for fake Laura Gemser (who barely exists in the movie at all).

eXistenZ - 1999

I just finished rewatching this Cronenberg film for about the third time, and dang if I don't feel right now like I want to rewatch a bunch of his older work.  It's just so damn weird!

I've seen eXistenZ possibly the most of any of his movies. Seems like a strange one to pick, especially since in my mind I like Videodrome and Naked Lunch more, and I love Crash and Dead Ringers.Yet, I do like eXistenZ and I think it's as good as a lot of his work, and perhaps less known.

Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh lead up an all star cast in this insane and for sure slightly confusing entry. In the beginning, Jude Law is at a demonstration of Jennifer's new video game eXistenZ when a man in the audience gets up and tries to assassinate her. He shoots her in the shoulder and Jude takes her away, and soon the two of them are embarking on a strange journey in both the real world and in the game world, and of course the lines between the two begin to blur.

My first thought watching this was, damn, I miss these effects. Real and extremely strange, props and devices and decorations are always present in Cronenberg films. There's the famous bone gun which I've remembered for years, and there's the video game consoles themselves, which are part insect and part genitals. Every time these characters jack into the game, they fondle this weird small pink thing that is decorated with things that look like orifices or nipples. The sexual connotation is high as the main characters also have sexually significant "ports" installed into their backs that they finger or tongue sometimes.

This movie was super ahead of it's time. It predicts a world in which people are overly consumed with games to the point where they believe more in the game than their real life. Once these people play the games, they just want to stay there, and it's fucking fucked up just like our current world is. This predicted the ugly turn games would take, and in this movie there's a strong theme of being against the technology of the game.

Second to that, the movie was obviously outdone by The Matrix, but this sort of plot was surely huge at the time. The whole fake reality thing might seem contrived right now, but this was made at the same time as Matrix, and should not be looked at as a copycat.

Not Cronenberg's best, but for sure a 4 star film.

Dungeon of Harrow - 1964

This fuzzed out fuckery of a film really fucked me, dude. I barely made it.

5 minutes in I was checking the time. I was wondering what was happening.

in the beginning, the Marquis de Sade is living on an island somewhere and a couple arrive, and soon enough Sade is fucking with 'em.

Nothing really happens, it's dull, and when something does happen, it doesn't matter. yawn. no stars

Double Exposure -1982

I've been doing two movies off this boxset every time I put in a disc...so far. If I kept that up I'd finish the set in just 25 days!

I put this movie on, and something about the acting or the style early on I knew I was in for a treat. Main actor Michael Callan is not someone I recognize at all, and is not leading man type, but he's great as a sorta weird enigmatic photographer. The style of the film is apparent immediately as well, great cinematography and music and editing.

The plot unfolds slowly, we follow the main character, photographer Adrian. He's a bit of an oddball, charismatic but strange and offbeat, and he takes pics and takes women to bed without nary a thought about it for the first like 30something minutes until he has a dream where he murders a woman. He goes to his therapist and talks it over, and we don't really know the reality of it until later when we see him killing people and he DOESN'T wake up, meaning it's real?

The film is quite ambiguous for a while even then as he goes on to date a new girl, and he has a weird relationship with his brother, and so on. We see him once begin to cheat on his girlfriend, and while he does so, flashbacks show us her death at his hands. He's looking pretty guilty and the law is hot on his heels.

The movie goes on, and it's really unique and fun in a shitload of ways. The casting is great and has a few known faces to legitimize it. It feels retro and very 70s a lot of the time, walking a thin tightrope of self aware and self deprecating at times.

I knew this one would have a cult following, and it does. It's extremely big online and even got a reissue on dvd recently by Vinegar Syndrome.

A thoroughly entertaining romp, it's a Bonafide 4 star film.

The Corpse Grinders - 1971

Ted V Mikels is an unheard of lower budget director most don't know anything about. I know of him from MST3K favorite The Girl in Gold Boots... Talk about an underrated episode.

In the Corpse Grinders (which I discovered is only two steps away from Larry Buchanan on IMDb) we have a no-name cast in a very low budget, minimal exploitation flick. This is a return to the really, really low budget and slow, slow ass filmmaking I haven't seen in a little while. And, despite being 75 minutes long, this movie takes forever to get anywhere.

This was in my amazon queue and it reminded me of when I used to watch stuff like this a lot. Returning to this after a year of hardly any exploitation, and also a year of really offbeat wtf 70s movies exclusively including the Swinging 70's boxset, I am left to wonder exactly what is wrong with me that at one point this was what I watched almost exclusively. This stuff is just plain bad, in summary.

There's a cat food company somewhere that is putting human flesh into their cat food, they're paying people 2 cents a pound for human bodies and they are continually running short because apparently this cat food is very popular. This naturally leads to people being killed to fill the increasing demand for cat food. It's a shoddy plot, but it's a shoddy movie. This happen and mild thrills are had as you basically just wait for these guys to get caught somehow.

I'll give it about 1.5 stars I guess.